wickedqueen.net

Listening to my music collection on random, I just realized something: I really don’t like Bjork. I don’t, like, HATE Bjork. But every time a Bjork track comes on,* I skip it, because I don’t LIKE Bjork.

I don’t really like Dar Williams, either. Some of her stuff is okay. But that song “The Christians and the Pagans” makes me want to vomit.

On the other hand, I AM one of those hip young crafty people you hear so much about in poorly written college newspaper features:

Short (for me) scarf in half-double crochet using a skein and a half of Yarn Bee Beguile in “aegean,” raising the question: Is this supposed to be like the Red Sea? Are we supposed to believe that the Aegean is some kind of nightmarish Valentine’s cauldron of red, purple, and fuchsia? Am I spelling “fuchsia” correctly? Why can I never remember? (I wasn’t, but thanks to dictionary.com, you would never know if I weren’t so open about these things.)

I did figure out how to make hats last year, but I am lazy, and continue to mostly stick to rectangular objects although I’d really LIKE to make something more complex. I actually bought some Simply Soft recently because there was a pattern on the label for a cute striped sweater, even though I am absolutely terrible at following patterns and have so far not even attempted to get started on it.

I’ve always thought Bellweather was onto something with the whole “low skill threshhold” thing about fads–there’s a reason there are so many people knitting/crocheting scarves and blankets and not a whole hell of a lot else. I don’t WANT to be part of the trendy problem, but… see above re: laziness. At least my “aegean” scarf goes with my hair.

—

*One might wonder, since I don’t like Bjork, why these tracks keep coming on. Why do I HAVE Bjork? I think it was an effort to show a college girlfriend that I was an appropriate mate. That doesn’t explain why I haven’t gotten rid of it in the six years since we broke up and stopped speaking, but I’m not always good with change.

I have way too much yarn. Last night, I started making a scarf out of some stuff that had originally been slated for Terri, but then I ended up making her Christmas scarf out of something else that was much nicer, leaving me with two skeins of Lion Homespun. So there I am making a scarf out of one of them because my parents are watching The Island* and I JUST saw it and it was a one-eye movie the first time around; I have to do SOMETHING with my hands, and I ask Sophie if she likes it and she says no, and god knows I don’t need any more scarves than I already have/have purchased materials for.

Hannah liked it, though, so I guess she’s getting an additional scarf (I made her a scarf and hat combo for Christmas). It did work up into nice stripes.

And yet, I feel like I should go to Hobby Lobby this week, because all their storebrand Yarn Bee yarn is 50% off, and it’s not like I won’t be buying more yarn at some point anyway, and it’s not like it GOES BAD or something. And the sparkly blue stuff that I want to use for a scarf for myself is Yarn Bee, and crazy expensive, and I need another skein of it.

I actually bought knitting needles a few days ago; all the Christmas stuff was 75% off, and there was this pack of candy cane striped knitting needles in like seven different sizes, which for $4 was a damn good deal. Not that I know how to knit, but it would sure make my mother happy if I learned. And I think some yarns just look better knit than crocheted. And maybe someday I’ll actually be able to make a sweater–it only took me about four years to graduate from rectangular objects to hats, after all.

—

*My father is a geneticist, so you can imagine how excited he was when Ewan McGregor learned Latin from his CLONED DNA. Meanwhile, my mother made a pointed remark approximately every ten minutes about HOW MUCH BETTER The Island was than Fantastic Four. I’m not saying Fantastic Four was great art, but I think she has an unreasonable prejudice against it.

It’s amazing: you never notice how badly all the blankets in your house need to be washed until it’s Sunday afternoon and you have a shitload of academic work to do.*

I am somewhat entranced by the lint that my blankets generate: it is approximately 10 parts cat hair to one part body glitter. After this year’s Halloween costume,** I imagine our body glitter content will be high for some time.

Anyway, the nice thing about cheap acrylic afghans is that they wash and dry with ease. I also washed my giant rainbow scarf, which some people feel is better classified as a blanket, but who will be laughing in January, hmm?

Last night, when for some reason I just could NOT go to sleep, I spent some time thinking about a Fibonacci Sequence afghan, which would alternate stitches in Fibonacci numbers of rows: 1 row single stitch, 1 row double, 2 rows single, 3 rows double, 5 rows single… You get the picture. I’m just not sure what to count as the first row, because the chain row and the second row are a little different.

There was a MathNet once about the Fibonacci Sequence. I thought it was so cool. According to some random webpage I just googled, it also describes the procreation of rabbits. And what have I done lately?

—

*And now I’m blogging.

**Photos forthcoming–I have some close-ups, but I’m hoping a full body shot from the party I attended came out, so that you can see my tail.

Shortly after I got really fat,* I broke my favorite denim skirt because I refused to believe that I had gotten That Fat, and thus just kept trying to zip it against all physical feedback until it broke. I bet it would fit now, which makes it all the more irritating.

HOWEVER.

Today I found not one, as I had suspected there might be, but TWO pairs of jeans from my immediate post-Japan period (when I was very skinny**), and they both fit perfectly. They were in a box in the top of my closet, folded under a fancy heirloom coat that my grandmother gave me and my old purple leopard print bedspread.

I’m amazed that I kept them this long, since I’m pretty sure that I haven’t worn them in at least 2 1/2 years, and I have moved at least once in that time. But I’m certainly glad that I did, since they are now the best-fitting pants I’ve got.

On a related note, I’ve bagged up probably about 10 pairs of pants that are now just way too big, along with a few tops and other articles of clothing. Keely remarked that she’s read that dieters are advised to get rid of too large clothing, lest its presence lure them into regaining the weight, and that is something of a concern, but mainly, I am just too much of a clotheshorse to keep 10 pairs of pants that don’t even FIT me. I don’t have anywhere to STORE them.

I bought a sweater on State Street yesterday. It was on sale, but I still need to stop spending money, but on the other hand, my extant sweater collection HAS gotten pretty baggy and they had it in a medium. I’ll be glad when my weight stabilizes.

And on a different yet still culturally feminine note, I finished the scarf I was making for my friend Laura’s three-year-old daughter–well, I just need to put the fringe on it. I had a hard time deciding what the right length was, since I know that my personal tastes run to “ridiculous,” but I still wanted to make it long enough to wrap. I think it’s okay, though, and there should be enough of the Simply Soft Quick to make a hat for my OTHER elementary school friend’s baby. Everyone is reproducing.

—

*I blame graduate school.

**I guess this might mean that I am once again “very skinny,” but it’s kind of hard to tell. I have kind of a strange body image right now.